Unrest in the tin mines of Bolivia cost the large losses

Large losses — up to half a million dollars a day — costing the owners of downtime on the Bolivian tin mines huanuni where workers continue to strike. Employees of the company, to develop this field, require the owner of a tin assets (organization «Empresa Minera Huanuni», the state-controlled mining company «Corporación Minera de Bolivia» («COMIBOL»)) renegotiation of pension workers. Opponents of the protesters do not intend to go to meet them and urging employees to end the strike and return to their jobs. «The effects of disruption of production plans at the mine could have a negative impact not only on the welfare of workers and their families: the case has already taken a serious turn, and now the economic destabilization could threaten the department of Oruro and even the entire Bolivian mining industry» — said in a statement the representatives of «COMIBOL «.

Earlier it was reported that the strike on the tin mine «Empresa Minera Huanuni» was supported by activists of «Central Obrera Boliviana» — the main Bolivian union. The authorities of the state to recognize the actions of miners illegal. In particular, representatives of the Ministry of Labor called on the country's tin mining company's management to keep wages protesters employees for each day of unauthorized absence from the workplace.

Bolivia — one of the countries in South America, where the key control over natural resources by extractive companies implementing state. Nevertheless, the presence of large reserves of tin, lead, zinc, tungsten, iron, precious metals and hydrocarbon minerals allows a country to hold strategic positions in matters of supply of these resources to the global market. At the same time a major role in the Bolivian economy plays a tin mining (in spite of the relatively modest size of the area the country occupies third place in the presence of metal in the interior — with a share of about 15% of world reserves), which is conducted in many rich deposits of the republic — huanuni, Potosi, Lyalyagua, Catavi, Chokaya, Caracoles, Kolkiri, Chorolke and other mines.